Are zombies sexy?

I know that, with Twilight and True Blood and Being Human and the onward march of more and more sexy vampires, nonconformists are hoping for a different monster to idealize. It is always vaguely uncomfortable when the supposedly appalling, unique, and individualistic thing you are into becomes commonplace. For a while, those who loved monsters but did not want to jump on the vampire bandwagon made do with werewolves. The thing is that werewolves represent rage, not sexual rage, just mad-as-hell out-of-control blind rage. And that is ultimately not that hot for most people. Although I confess to having had one or two stories published where I did write some werewolf sex or romance in there, in my defense, one was written on assignment and one was written partly to match accompanying illustrations already selected. At any rate, werewolves just plain don’t have the sexual magnetism of vampires and werewolf costumes are really difficult as heck to put together.

Zombie costumes, on the other hand, are pretty easy to put together. You just need to look decaying and injured and you can even make a sexy zombie costume by distressing your zombie wardrobe. A costume which is easy to do is good for group activities. Getting a bunch of people to dress up as monsters and go out on the town together is fun. Fewer people have sort of cannon ideas of what a zombie must be, as opposed to what a vampire or werewolf must be, so there is more freedom in costuming for zombie parties. But zombies are still ultimately kind of leprosy monsters. You and fifty comrades chanting “brains, brains, brains” in your torn underwear in a public place is awesome. But the actual zombie concept of a shambling stupid corpse with parts falling off is not so hot, Julie notwithstanding. And, although I forget which company it was, one of the big media corporate giants ran a zombie walk at Comic Con last weekend. So, after co-option, nobody really tends to get individuality points for being into zombies over vamps any more.

So I was looking at this half naked photo series by Ivan Hidalgo which featured sexy zombies and it brought the vital question to mind: Are zombies sexy or do they just make for good costumes?